One

The neko's name was Dharsha, but no one had called him by it for more than a year. It was only boy, or you or slave or worse things that the string of humans who thought they owned him used to direct him. They thought him beneath them. They saw the ears and the tail and called him an animal, though how they could justify it was beyond him when the rest was the same. They belittled his people because they roamed nomadically through the lush forests of their homeland, because they had no standing army, because their wise men carried the history of their peoples instead of storing it in tomb upon tomb of paper filled books filled with incomprehensible marks.

The neko was young, barely past adolescence, hairless save for the grey fur of his tail and that of his sensitive, cat-like ears. The hair that flowed around them was black as night, sleek and shining with youthful health. His eyes were pale blue, with irises that adapted to light or darkness. He was slim and light boned, lithe and agile as his far-distant feline cousins. It would be a decade or more before his bones and muscles gained the weight mass of an adult Neko male and even then some males stayed slight, never finding the ferocity of the pack protectors. He had an uncle that was a beta male, but his blood brother had already started gaining the broad shoulders and dense muscles of a fighter.

At least he had a year ago the last time the young neko had seen him. Before he'd been snatched from the docks of the human settlement on the edges of Neko lands. Drugged and bound, he'd passed the ocean voyage in a daze of sickness that had not worn off until he was caged and collared in a human slave market. An exotic prize worth his weight in gold.

So they thought. He was no easy conquest this young neko. No meek slave to go passively into the life they planned for him. He fought tooth and nail, despite the beatings and the threats. His first master hadn't the stomach to deal with him, and sold him to an acquaintance. That man called him an animal and caged him, so he acted the part, biting every hand that came near him, only succumbing to his master's attentions when he was bound hand and foot. The man got little pleasure from him.

After four months he was put back on the block, in a human city three hundred miles from the coast that might have held some hope of him finding passage home. He was bought by another man, who caged him and starved him until he was too weak to fight back and then complained that his slave was listless as an old rag when he mounted an emaciated body too weak to do more than lie there and breath when he was taken. That abuse continued for several more months, until his master met an untimely end during a bar room brawl.

Dharsha was sold again, this time for far, far less than his original price to a woman with a taste for exotic young things. Her name, he thought was Kathera, but he only ever called her Lady. She called him Neko and when he tied to tell her his name, she shushed him with a slim, painted finger and said that names were for people, not property. But she was gentle about it, and kind in her own way so he let it be, accepting the food she gave him, and the rest she allowed his body for recuperation. He might even have fallen halfway in love with her, while he healed in her house on the outskirts of the human city he found himself in. He sat in the small room she allowed him and gazed through the tiny window high up on the wall at distant mountains thick with forest and remembered wistfully the green forests of home.

The first time she called him to her chambers, he was amazed. For females were mysterious, wondrous things that he had little experience of, but had mused often enough about, as most young males did. And despite the fact that she was human with her small human ears and her tailless rear, she was beautiful, with gleaming red hair and lush round breasts. He fell into her when she beckoned and gloried in her body, gladly following her whims as she guided him down the paths to her greater pleasure.

He was in love. And she crushed him, time after time, trampling his adoration under foot when she refused to treat him as anything other than a slave. When she brought a man to her bedroom, a merchant that she was dealing with, and summoned the neko for them both to play with, he rebelled in a fit of injured jealousy. Violence that he had not practiced since her purchase of him welled to the surface and he attacked the man who had coupled with her, until the Lady struck him down from behind.

She was not hesitant in punishing him. She and her merchant lover strung him up and lashed him until he bled, then locked him in his cube of a room for two days without food or water. When she finally let him out, her spell was broken. His adolescent lust was gone, replaced by surly dissatisfaction with his lot. He would not strike her, as he might have a male master, but he gave her no easy satisfaction either. When she summoned him to her bed, his performance was less than enthusiastic and eventually she stopped summoning him.

"You come from the forests, do you not?" the Lady asked one day and he glowered at her ears flicking backwards, and shrugged.

"I'm for a day trip into the woodlands west of here," she said. "You may accompany me. If you wish." She smiled at him, lifting a brow and he stared, caught off guard by the offer of a choice.

"Yes," he answered quietly, feeling a little stirring of the old adoration.

He had never ridden a horse, only ever traveled in caravans, caged in barred wagons, or leashed and led along on foot behind a line of other slaves. He was not quite sure he liked horses and felt certain they held little affection for him. The animal the Lady offered him was fat and old and generally gentle, the lady assured him, but the beast still flicked her ears unhappily at his scent, and cast him malicious stares from large, white rimmed brown eyes. He mounted only because the lady sat staring down from her own, much younger, much fancier mount, waiting on him.

He tried to find a comfortable position on the saddle, the best way to curl his tail, the best method to steer the beast without it twisting its blunt toothed muzzle around to try and bit at his bare shin. He finally settled for not steering at all, but dropping the reins and letting his horse follow in the footsteps of the one the lady rode.

It was a long morning, and they stopped once at the side of a small pond surrounded by moss-covered rocks to quench their thirst. After another hour or two, they dismounted and walked the horses a ways, before the lady stopped to tie the reins of her mount to a young tree and signaled Dharsha to do the same.

"We'll walk a ways from here, slave," she said.

He frowned, picking his way silently through the mulch along the trail. "Where are we going?" he asked, looking up at the tall, straight trees, their foliage sparse and deep green and near the upper half.

"It's not a slave's place to ask," she said, not bothering to look back at him.

Which only served to ignite a spark of rebellion. "I'm not a slave," he said, had said too many times to recall, to too many human's that thought he was nothing more than property to barter. "Just because you steal something, doesn't make it yours."

She did half turn to look at him. "Wisdom from the mouths of the ignorant. Anyone who stole you, my boy is far, far removed from here and I paid good gold for your disobedient hide. Now hush."

He glared at her back, and could not quite help his gaze traveling down to the swell of her hips. As he was watching the gentle sway, mind half forming images of her naked buttocks, his sharp hearing picked up sounds discordant with the song of nature. He cast a subtle glance around and saw a shadow in the trees. Two shadows. No more. The movement of men in the trees.

"Lady," he sidled up to her. "We're not alone."

She stopped, one hand on a shapely hip. "I know. Hello, gentlemen."

Figures melted out of the woods. Big men in heavy pants and thick-soled boots, unshaven or bearded, their broad faces were hard and grim. Some of them held axes, others simply had belt knives at their sides. There were five of them, two sets that could have been brothers, one hawk-nosed black haired man that grinned ear to ear as he approached.

"Well met, good foresters," the Lady said, seemingly unconcerned as they surrounded them. The neko turned, ears flattening, tail twitching in nervousness. The sense of danger here raced up his spine like cold breeze. He started, as one of them lifted an axe to his shoulder. A bald man with a beard and small, speculative eyes.

"Lady," this man said, even as a hand gripped Dharsha's arm from behind, and another curled around his neck as he started to protest. Two men, both half again his weight held him fast, twisting his arms behind him when he tried to wriggle away.

"As I promised, I've a neko slave to sell."

"No! You bitch!" Dharsha cried, betrayed, furious, aghast. How could she after sharing her body with him? After teaching him the wonders of sex?

"Let's see what we're buying," one of them said, pulling Dharsha's tunic open and wrestling it off him with the help of the two holding his arms.

"Get your hands off me!" he cried, frantically bucking to dislodge them.

"Gag the little bitch," someone growled and a thick wad of cloth was stuffed into his mouth before a strip of cloth was tied around it and fastened at the back of his head. They bound his wrists behind him, wrenching his arms as they did, half pulling him off his feet.

"Nice," one of the bald brothers commented. This one had a large belly overhanging his belt and thick hair poked out of his collar where his shirt was open. He ran a big hand down Dharsha's belly, while someone else lifted his loincloth, revealing his dangling genitals.

"Look at that little cock he's sporting. And smooth as a baby's bottom." A hand rubbed the skin above his cock, before cupping his shrinking balls. He hissed through the gag.

"He's disobedient and willful and needs a strong hand teach him what it means to be a proper slave."

The older seeming, flat-bellied bald man was counting out coins into the Lady's palm. "No shortage of strong hands here, lady."

"It seems the poor creature does not understand that his kind are no better than the animals his ancestors bred with. I've had about as much of his defiance as I can handle."

The dark haired man caught hold of the neko's face, forcing his head back, tilting it side to side. "Pretty little thing. We've need of a toy like him back at camp. This little cat will learn his place quickly enough."

The Lady leaned in, her slim fingers trailing down Dharsha's chest, her full pink lips curved into a smile that held nothing of sweetness or humor. "See what things come to when you don't know your place? You'll wish you still had my gentle woman's touch after these fine men have tutored you in what its like to be a man's bitch." Then she straightened, smoothing her skirts and waggled her fingers at him. "Good riddance."

And she was gone, striding back down the path towards the horses, her full purse jangling at her hip. Dharsha stared after her in dismay, until he was jerked around, strong hands on his upper arms propelling him between two of the woodsmen down the path opposite the way the lady had gone. Deeper into this mountainous wood with its strange straight boled trees which covered the ground with the long, narrow needle-like leaves they shed. They passed a clearing where a great many of the trees had been felled, their stumps in various stages of bleeding the last of their lives out in sap. A good ways further a small collection of rough wood structures came into view. A cabin with a large black dog asleep on the covered porch, a small stable with an empty corral, a woodshed, a smokehouse. Trees had been cleared away around it enough to allow enough sunlight in for grass to grow upon the knoll where the cabin perched, but it only survived in patches surrounded by dirt and mud. As they passed the stable, Dharsha saw a line of dangling animal feet. Deer, fowl, something large enough to be a bear. The side of the house and the shed was decorated with the skulls of their kills, mostly the antlers of hoofed beasts, but some less obvious of origin.

The death masks gave Dharsha little optimism about the nature of this place and he shivered, digging his heels in a little as they urged him up the incline to the cabin. They twisted his arms and forced him the remaining distance, pausing on the weatherworn porch to strip him of the loincloth, leaving him completely naked. One of the younger ones, with reddish brown hair and a thick, prominent brow brought out a leather collar three fingers wide with a tarnished silver bell on the front and a sturdy iron loop behind the buckle. They fitted it around his neck and he growled behind the gag, having worn collars before and having no love for them.

Into the cabin, a cluttered space with one big room that contained kitchen and hearth and a small alcove to one side where double bunks could be seen. There was a wooden table with benches, a counter with cupboards above it. An antique stove. Chests, tools and odds and ends were stacked against the walls. The only clear space was before the hearth where a brown bear skin rug lay, with five chairs at its edges. There was an animal cage, no more than three foot tall and four long that they led him towards. The elder bald one opened the door while one of the others untied Dharsha's hands, then grasped him by the hair and shoved him into the cage headfirst. His feet were kicked in after him and the door slammed shut and locked.

He crouched there, the bars of the bottom biting into his knees and struggled to unfasten the gag. He spat out the wad of cloth they'd stuffed into his mouth and spun to grasp the bars of the door, glaring out at them. A dozen different profanities trembled on the tip of his tongue, and stilled as he watched them lay their axes and their saws upon the kitchen table, then sit down to clean them. He shrank back in the cage, pulling his knees up to his chest, listening to the sound of grindstones on blade edges, wondering what sort of men he had been sold into the hands of. The tools were stowed finally, cleaned of sap and sawdust, and one of them pulled out what looked to be a slop bucket and ladled a meaty, gristly sort of gruel into two large bowls. One he took out onto the porch, whistling for the dog. The other they put inside Dharsha's cage. He shrank back from it, glaring out at them in disgust. It smelled horrible, and looked worse, chopped bits of animal innards, mixed up with scraps of what might have been dinners from days past. The dog outside lapped it up eagerly. Dharsha tried not to gag at the sight of it.

"If you don't eat now, you'll get nothing else till tomorrow." The big bald man stared down at him, cold eyed and shrewd, the stray grey hair or two beginning to show in his beard.

Dharsha grasped the bars of his cage and glared up. "I'm not an animal, you bastard. I don't eat out of a bowl on the floor."

The man canted his head, while the others drifted up to stand about the cage. Two bald men with beards, one hard with corded muscle, the other broad with a bulging gut. Two almost identical younger men with red-brown hair, small eyes and overhanging brows, and a broad shouldered, crook-nosed raven haired man with unnaturally large hands.

"Did you hear that, Karl, he says he's not an animal?" the fat one sneered.

Karl lifted a brow, and crouched down, eye level with Dharsha. "That tail and those ears speak differently. Your mama or your mama's mama rutted with some long tailed cat. That makes you no bettern' a beast in my book. Its time you learned an animal's place in the world of decent, human men."

Dharsha hissed at him, he couldn't help it, and Karl stepped back to let one of the others unlock the cage door. Hands reached in and grasped whatever limbs they could to drag him out, him kicking and biting the whole way. A fist landed in his gut and the air went out of him. When he doubled over they slammed him down to the floor, grabbing his arms and twisting them up behind him, tying them painfully tight wrist to elbow. He still tried to fight them, kicking out while they tried to get control of his feet. He caught someone a blow in the face, before they tied his ankles together. They caught hold of his thrashing tail and used it to haul him onto his knees where he lay trembling in fury, face to the floor, ass in the air.

"Now ain't that a fine little piece of ass, just waitin' for attention?" the fat one said.

"Let's warm it up for him."

They took a switch to him, thumb thick and still fresh enough to have some give. One of them gripped his tail, keeping his rear high and vulnerable to the beating. He screamed and cursed the first half dozen blows, then sobbed as it didn't stop and his ass became one large burning center of pain. The man who wielded the switch left nothing untouched, from his lower thighs to his balls, to the cleft of his ass. The blows halted finally as he was begging incoherently, and the bowl of meaty gruel was pushed in front of his face. He could barely focus on it through the tears.

Karl pulled his head up by the hair, slid the bowl under his nose and shoved his face into it. "Eat it bitch!"

Dharsha lifted his face, gasping, having inhaled a few chunks of liquid gruel. Karl didn't give him the chance to fully catch his breath, before his boot came down upon his neck, plunging his face back into the contents of the bowl. The neko sputtered and gasped into the mush, drowning in bloody gruel. The switch slashed into his buttocks again while he suffocated.

He heard them laughing, distantly as consciousness started to waver in a haze of tight constricting pain around his chest. Heard them egging on the man lashing his bottom. "Make him bleed, Sven. Stripe those balls and that tight little fuck-hole, too."

The pressure on his neck let up. A hand grasped his hair and pulled his head out of the bowl. Bloody bits of meat and rancid food dripped from his face, dripping out of his nose as he gasped, struggling to blow chunks out and clear his airway.

Sven let him cough it up, let him catch enough breath to ease the ache in his chest, then crouched down and said softly. "Now eat it, bitch. Every last bit."

And he did. Shocked past defiance, he buried his face in the bowl and sucked up the rancid stuff, swallowing chunks of gristle and fat whole in efforts to get it down in the least amount of time possible. They made him lick the bowl and the floor around it where the gruel had overflowed. It was spotless when he'd finished. One of them, the black haired one, wiped his face with a damp cloth afterward, then picked him up and deposited him back in the cage, still bound. He lay curled on his side, ass throbbing, stomach threatening nausea in rebellion of what filled it. He felt the slow trickle of blood from a dozen welts. His balls felt hot and swollen. He shut his eyes and listened to the woodsmen fix their supper. Their conversation was a dull buzz outside his focus.

There was a scraping of the bench as they rose from table, the clatter as they put the dishes in the sink, the slosh of water as they washed them, then put them in the cupboard. Footsteps, heavy and ominous. Maybe if he pretended to sleep, they'd go away and leave him alone.

"Time for you to start earning your keep, slave."

They grasped his bound ankles and pulled him out, dragging him like bagged game to the rug before the hearth, where the left him momentarily as they shed boots and shirts, the two twins shucking their pants as well and crouching next to him as naked as he was. They untied his arms and ankles, but with five of them, all of them half again his size and weight, there was little enough he could do fight them off. He was too exhausted and in too much pain from the switching to give it much of an effort. He'd been used before by men sexually and it was no unknown horror.

They got him on his hands and knees on the rug, hands on his wrists and legs holding him still while the fat one pressed his crotch close to his face, his thick, apparently never washed cock head nudging against Dharsha's lips.

"Open wide and take it, hole," The fat man encouraged, grabbing a handful of hair and tilting the neko's head backwards to better jab at his mouth with his cock.

"You'll break his jaw with that thick thing, Stein," One of the twin's predicted with a laugh.

"It'll fit. These neko slaves are flexible little bitches."

"Open it." Karl who was kneeling at his side, snaked a hand up under his jaw, fingers pressing into the hinge of a jaw and forcing his mouth open. Stein's cock forced its way in, the girth of his cock making Dharsha's jaw pop alarmingly. It jabbed the back of his throat painfully, stopped from going further by Dharsha's constricting throat muscles.

Inquisitive hands spread his smarting buttocks and he felt fingers probe at his opening. "Look how small and tight his ass hole is," someone remarked. "Don't look like nothing bigger than a finger been up there for a month of Enddays."

And to prove the point a finger slid in dry. Dharsha gasped, and gagged as Stein's cock shoved past his tense muscles and wedged down his spasming throat. Big balls slapped him in the chin and the overhanging belly pressed tight against his forehead. He couldn't breath with it clogging his throat and his eyes bulged in panic as suffocation started in, but Stein pulled back, just enough to let him get a trickle of air, then slammed back down, cock stretching the neko's throat.

The finger in his ass withdrew and came back with cool slickness. It plunged in once, then smeared itself around his opening. A big body moved between his legs, forcing his thighs wider and hands gripped his hips and held him steady while the head of a cock butted against his clenched asshole. Someone else leaned in over his back, helpfully digging fingers into his buttocks and spreading them painfully taut. The cock centered itself on target and jammed its way in past screaming muscle. The neko would have squealed if his mouth hadn't been stuffed full.

Now that he was securely spitted from both ends the other hands relaxed their grips, shifting to roam over his body, pinching nipples, twisting his dangling balls. He whimpered, body rocked back and forth from the twin rhythms of the men invading him. All he could see was the thick hair and the flabby flesh around the crotch of the man in his mouth. Small noises issued from his throat, whimpering sobs that got lost in the slap of flesh against his face, against his thighs as the man behind him slammed into him time after time.

"Damn, but he's so tight, it almost hurts," The one behind him ground out.

"Not for long," Another one laughed and, "come on boys, spill your loads so we can have a go."

Another eager cock slapped him across the cheek, the other twin sidling up and rubbing it against his face. Stein grasped his ears and pulled his face up close to his crotch, straining to snake his cock all the way down Dharsha's throat as he came, shooting stream after stream of hot, acrid jism. He pulled out and the neko could barely close his aching jaw before his face was grasped and another thick cock shoved between his lips.

The man came in his ass, leaving a hot squishy mess in his bowels. Karl moved to take his place, parting Dharsha's cheeks with his thumbs before plunging in, but he went easier, Dharsha's hole slicked with come and blood. The dark-haired one, Sven he thought he'd heard him called, wriggled under him and lifted his head so he could get Dharsha's nipple in his mouth. He suckled the one, pulling and teasing with his teeth while he worked the other with his fingers. The neko's arms trembled, strength depleted. One gave out and the twin at his head held him up by the hair, then slowly knelt, never breaking his rhythm in Dharsha's mouth, letting the neko's upper body settle onto Sven beneath him. Sven moaned approval, mouth fastened to one swollen nipple, sucking so hard that it seemed as if it might burst. Karl stretched him, long as well as thick and masterful with his strokes. He came finally, pulling out to spew on Darsha's back.

Since Sven was preoccupied with the neko's nipple's Stein worked himself back to hardness and took his brother's place at Dharsha's rear. He didn't last long, coming after a few dozen quick thrusts. One of the twins, young and easily aroused even after so recently coming, felt it wrong to leave Dharsha's ass unattended and took a second ride.

"He's loose now, ain't he Olaf," the twin at his mouth laughed and Olaf, the one buried in his ass, wiggled a finger into Dharsha's ass next to his cock, stretching the swollen mouth so it gaped a little around the thick base of his member. He laughed, and Karl canted his head, a slow smile crossing his lips.

Karl sidled up close to Olaf and squeezing his own big finger up the neko's ass alongside Olaf's cock. He slid another finger in and pulled, stretching the mouth of Dharsha's anus an inch out from Olaf's cock. It felt as if he was tearing, as if fragile skin would rip like so much paper under the pressure. Karl crouched down, canting his head close to peer up into the darkened nook. "Gotta lot of room in there now," he observed. "Bet this little slut can take a lot more than a cock up his shoot."

"Bet so," Olaf gasped as Karl withdrew his fingers and he recommenced his thrusts.

"We keep this little bitch filled, so he don't forget what he is. A living breathin' hole. No bettern' garbage, hear that?" Karl slapped the neko's switch striped ass. He grabbed the neko by the hair, pulling him backwards off of Bo's cock, while Olaf shifted a little to accommodate his fucking of him now that he was on his knees, back arched and neck twisted in Karl's grip.

"Repeat it," Karl growled in his ear, near to pulling hair out by the root. "Let me hear you say you ain't worth nothing except for a hole for us to use. That you're lowern' garbage. Say it!"

"I - -;I'm - - gasp - - gasp - - a hole for you to use. Ahhh - - I'm - - garbage. Lower than - - garbage."

Karl shoved him back down and Olaf cried out, his cock spitting into Dharsha's ass.

When he'd finished and his shrinking cock slipped out of the neko's slick ass, Olaf shoved him over onto his side, where the neko lay gasping, half conscious.

It's over. It's over. The thought kept looping his head, himself limp and aching on the floor, only barely aware of them moving in the cabin around him, the squeak of a chair as someone settled into it by the fire, the sweet smell of pipe tobacco burning. Hands turned him onto his back and he blinked up dazedly at a man leaning over him, snaking an arm under his knee and lifting his hips enough to slide his cock between his buttocks and find an opening too abused to even put up a ghost of resistance. It didn't mean it didn't hurt. Sven slid in, pushing Dharsha's knees towards his chest and pounding down with short, powerful strokes, while Dharsha sobbed and shuddered, exhausted. Shattered. A hole. Garbage.

They played with him through the night, in the flickering light of the fire, in ones or twos as their stamina returned enough to regain erections. He heard them say it had been a season since any of them had gotten sex other than the five-finger variety. They'd built up a head of steam and depleted it vigorously inside the neko's body. He was unconscious through a great deal of the later night, coming to in spurts of pain or imminent suffocation.

They finished with him when he was too loose to appease their pleasure and stuffed him back into the cage where he fell into sleep where he lay. Deep, dreamless dark that was more unconsciousness than real slumber.